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Lately I’ve been struggling with the latest essay for Endpapers. It was going to be on zibaldone, and an idea I’d had on how you can get both the easy process of just adding to the “jumble”, while also being able to find and use what you’d saved later without relying wholly on memory. I have a first draft, but to be honest, it just doesn’t feel that good. The idea is neat (maps and trails), but it also feels obvious, and like I’ve missed a trick.

In our uncertain times, it has never been easier to squitter out mediocre work. You don’t even need to put in any cognitive effort - there are machines to do that for you, if you choose.

But I do not want to avoid the effort it takes to make good work. The publishing of the essay is not the goal for me, but merely a by-product. The process of writing, of carving the idea from the ether and shaping it into something that’s worth your time to read, now that is what I am interested in. And it is hard. It takes time to build the skills needed to produce good work. And sometimes you produce work that isn’t where you wish it was.

By way of encouragement to anyone in a similar position, I leave you with three quotes from the godfather of podcasting, NPR’s Ira Glass:

“You will be fierce. You will fearless. And you will make work you know in your heart is not as good as you want it to be.” 

“It's hard to make something that's interesting. It's really, really hard. It's like a law of nature, a law of aerodynamics, that anything that's written or anything that's created wants to be mediocre. The natural state of all writing is mediocrity... So what it takes to make anything more than mediocre is such an act of will...” 

“It's gonna take a while. It's normal to take a while. You've just gotta fight your way through.”